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While legacy crap like Windows and OS X (thankfully only partially) could, then there's nothing that can stop Linux from being the most successful on desktops. I don't know why you consider Gnome is Linux. The truth is Gnome is the least popular compared to Unity and KDE. KDE is the best desktop I've ever seen and it's far better than Windows 7 with it's unholy interface and bugs mess. Win8 is even worse disaster, but it seems you've forgotten this. When comes to OS X it looses badly in 3D performance and the situation will be even worse with VALVE games that'll be optimized for Linux. This concerns M$hit as well. Summing up Linux is in the best position to conquer most of the desktops (if only most of the users are sane).

Fedoras Live Images comes in following flavors: default (Gnome), KDE; XFCE, LXDE. So it isn't right that all Fedora users have Gnome 3 installed by default.

according to a recent poll GNOME 3 is used more than any other DE by Fedora Community forum users:What Desktop Environment do you use?
quite likely this doesn't represent only Fedora users, the Fedora forum has non-Fedora users as well.

Actually I don't really care that much about surveys. No matter how many vote for KDE or Unity, I will still surely not use it

People wanting 95 redo can use LXDE XFCE, Enlightenment or a ton of other environments.

Not so sure Enlightenment fits, or E17 at least, fits that category. I mean it can emulate a Win 95 style but you make it sound like it inheriently looks old, but in my experience E17 can look like anything. And it's "Run Everything" program can do what the Unity dash does and more, whilst being a lot faster. Seriously underrated desktop is E17, IMO. Just hope the damn thing hits a truly stable release soon.

Originally Posted by Pawlerson

KDE is the best desktop I've ever seen

While a lot would not agree, I do agree with you. For me it is anyway.
It's quite amazing, and due to the nature of Plasma as soon as this tablet stuff rolled in they were able to quickly morph a tablet UI without writing an entirely new thing. Not to mention the netbook version. And these environments can function perfectly without graphic acceleration. That's power and flexibility if I've ever seen it and you have to admire the foresight of the KDE folks.

With Windows 8 (I believe), there's no "CPU fallback mode" like with Windows 7 and prior. All rendering relies on Directx 11 which, in turn, supports a CPU backend (and DX9/10 modes for legacy hardware)... so your statements are pretty invalid seeing as how the most popular Desktop OS on the market is doing the same thing as Gnome & Unity. It makes a whole lot of sense (from a developers perspective) to remove these "fallback" code paths... LLVM OpenGL backend mean cleaner code, less bugs, and faster DE development.

Nope. Any DX9 capable card with a WDDM capable driver can run Win8. Same requirements as Vista/7 (makes sense; same base kernel version (NT 6.1)).

Nope. Any DX9 capable card with a WDDM capable driver can run Win8. Same requirements as Vista/7 (makes sense; same base kernel version (NT 6.1)).

Yes I know. DirectX 11 has a legacy 9/10 modes with support for older hardware. What I meant is that there's now no longer a CPU specific fallback mode in Windows 8's DE (so I've been told).. it's part of Directx 11 instead, and all DE code targets Directx 11 for rendering, the same way Gnome/Unity are only targeting OpenGL (indirectly) for rendering now. There's no more "Oops, OpenGL didn't load, gotta run a completely different rendering API.." in the DE code because OpenGL (and Directx 11) are guaranteed to load, even without GPU hardware support. At least that's the idea.

Yes I know. DirectX 11 has a legacy 9/10 modes with support for older hardware. What I meant is that there's now no longer a CPU specific fallback mode in Windows 8's DE (so I've been told).. it's part of Directx 11 instead, and all DE code targets Directx 11 for rendering, the same way Gnome/Unity are only targeting OpenGL (indirectly) for rendering now. There's no more "Oops, OpenGL didn't load, gotta run a completely different rendering API.." in the DE code because OpenGL (and Directx 11) are guaranteed to load, even without GPU hardware support. At least that's the idea.